Friday, June 21

8:30 - 9:00  ~ Registration at VIVO. Refreshments served.

9:10 - 9:20  ~ Welcome

9:30 - 10:50 ~ Panel #1 : Revisionist Readings

              “Colonialism as nostalgia in Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children.” Siby Varghese

              “Glancing over the God's Shoulder: W.H. Auden's Impure Practice of the            Past in "The               Shield of Achilles."” Frank Ewert

              “The Political Ramifications of Ethnic Nostalgia in Joy Kogawa’s Obasan.”         Christina Cooke

11:00 - 12:30 ~ Panel #2 : Engineering the Natural

              “Biotechnology as a Neo-Utopian Space of Identification and Resistance in       Larissa Lai’s    Salt Fish Girl.” Marco Galvani

              “Utopian Gardens: Nostalgia and the Local Food Movement.” Kimberly              Gilbertson

              “Phantoms at the Helm: Nostalgia and Utopian Imagination in Education.”

              Eleonora Joensuu

12:30 - 2:30 ~ Lunch in the City

2:30 - 3:50 ~ Panel #3: Rearticulating Utopia

              “Approaching Paradise: Dante’s Eden and the Pastoral Tradition.”

              Allison Collins

               “Mediating the Urban Utopic: The Poetics of Henri Lefebvre and Fredric            Jameson.”               Melissa Macgregor

              “What “Foam of Frog Spawn,” John Donne, and the Easter Islands Have to       do With the               End of the World: Nostalgia in Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone     Gods.” Emily Corrie

4:00 - 5:00 ~ Keynote Speaker: Dr. Robert Tally, Texas State University  -

              “Utopia as Literary Cartography; or, the Other Spaces of the World System”

5:15 - 7:00 ~ Wine at The Whip - A Welcome Reception for participants.

Saturday, June 22

9:00 - 9:30 ~ Registration at VIVO. Refreshments served.

9:30 - 10:50 ~ Panel #3: Spatialized Nostalgia

              “Reimagining the Self as “Actor”: “Theatrical Encounters” in Jean Genet’s           Prisoner of Love.” Stephanie Lu

              “(In)human Labour: Precarity as Praxis in Larissa Lai's Salt Fish Girl” Haida          Antolick

               “Small Minds, Big Dreams: Technological Simulacra and Nostalgia in Dionne    Brand's What We All Long For.” Cam Fediuk

11:00 - 12:00 ~ Panel# 4: Linguistic Longing

              “Dreaming of a Mother Tongue: the “History of English” and its Origins in         the Medieval Period.” Kyla Drzazgowski

              “Sehnsucht: C.S. Lewis on the Pilgrim’s Longing.” Richard Angelo Bergen

12:00 - 2:00 ~ Lunch in the City

2:00 -3:20 ~ Panel #4: Countering Communities

              “Poetry’s Publics and Counterpublics: The Possibility of Collective and     Connective Reading.” Nicholas Tan

              “Molly House and Theatrical Spouse: Gay Subcultures and the Eighteenth         Century Theatre.” David Weston
              “'Loves sharp in the distance': the neoliberal city in Cecily Nicholson's     Triage.” Natalie Knight & Joseph Giardini

3:30 - 4:50 ~ Panel #5 : Discussion Panel

              “Provisionality, Utopia, and the Promise of the Dream”

              Ryan Fitzpatrick, Janey Dodd,  Karen Correia De Silva, Alex Muir, Will Owen     Kyle Carpenter & Nico Dicecco